Don’t Let BPH Keep You up at Night: 4 BPH Treatments

A vast majority of men are affected by Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH), and the urinary symptoms that accompany it may keep you and your partner up at night. These include:

  • A frequent need to urinate, both day and night
  • An urgent feeling of needing to urinate
  • A sense that you cannot completely empty your bladder
  • A weak or slow urinary stream
  • Difficulty or delay in starting urination
    A urinary stream that stops and starts

Although the intensity of symptoms caused by BPH can vary from patient to patient, over time, they can become quite bothersome and difficult to deal with.

If you are experiencing urinary symptoms caused by BPH, here are a few treatments that can reduce your symptoms and help you get a better night’s sleep.

Lifestyle and dietary changes

Making simple changes such as reducing or even eliminating coffee, tea and alcohol, as well as quitting or reducing smoking, are all changes that can reduce BPH symptoms because they tend to irritate the bladder. Reducing fluid intake in the afternoon and evening can also prevent the need to urinate more often during the night.

Medication

The use of medication is a common method to reduce the symptoms of BPH. In fact, 60% of men with an enlarged prostate take medication to relieve their symptoms. However, this type of treatment can cause side effects such as fatigue, dizziness and sometimes even sexual dysfunction. It should be noted that there is no treatment to cure BPH. These treatments are available to help alleviate the symptoms of the disease.

Tissue Removal Surgeries

Patients experiencing moderate to severe symptoms, may undergo a transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP) surgery. This treatment involves cutting part of the prostate tissue. This will unblock the flow of urine through the urethra. TURP is generally an effective long-term treatment for BPH. However, this is an invasive treatment that can cause long-term side effects such as retrograde ejaculation or leaking urine. For more information regarding this or other tissue removal surgeries, consult your doctor.

Rezūm Water Vapour Therapy

Rezūm is a groundbreaking new treatment for BPH that uses the thermal energy of steam delivered in targeted, controlled doses. The treatment consists of injecting bursts of vapour into the prostate to ablate the excess tissue that presses against the urethra. The water vapour therapy (Rezūm) relieves the symptoms of BPH by essentially shrinking the prostate. Although the procedure is merely a few minutes long, the treatment is effective in reducing the urinary symptoms caused by BPH. The treatment also has minimal side effects.

The information above will hopefully help you get a better night’s sleep! Treatments are available to help reduce urinary symptoms caused by BPH. Don’t let BPH keep you up at night. If you are experiencing urinary symptoms, talk to your doctor or start with this one-minute BPH quiz  to find out what treatment is best for you